well, what did you expect from an opera? (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} truegrit) wrote,@ 2007-06-26 00:10:00 |
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molds
double-dipping back into art school has introduced me to the wonderful smooth-on corporation and their wonderful line of industrial molding and casting products. using some smooth-on stuff, i made a polyurethane sheep. a polyurethane sheep! no, really, check it out:
from top to bottom: the original sheep, made of plasticine coated with black enamel paint; the rubber mold; the cast polyurethane sheep.
as you see, some of the enamel got stuck to the mold, which messed up the cast a little bit, but still, a polyurethane sheep. the thing that's really cool about this is that i can now make as many polyurethane sheep as i want and, like real sheep, they'll all look alike (i could also make the same sheep out of rubber, plastic, etc.).
also, i have a deep love of formless, blobby things, and polyurethane is a particularly fun, oozy, blobby material. here's some of the excess poly that i chopped off the cast:
now for what i really wanted to write about...
this weekend i attended the allied media conference in detroit: an activist-y conference about using media/technology as a tool for social change.
1. politics. this is from an essay by ahmad sadri ca. 1994 about salman rushdie's "the satanic verses":
"The core of intellectual engagement is the acceptance of moral "responsibility" for both anticipated and unanticipated consequences of one's expressions. Only in the presence of a tradition of political engagement will it become self-evident that to be "responsible" and nondogmatic about one's sense of aesthetic calling and political mission does not necessarily amount to compromising one's integrity... Political action is often monotonous and quite unheroic. It is far from a knightly quest, an uncompromising crusade in shining armor against darkness and evil. It involves choosing goals and soberly assessing the possibilities for their achievement. Political action requires balancing the positive and negative consequences of any action and possibly retreating from a perilous path. Compromise may be a dirty word in the universe of artistic and intellectual endeavor, but it is a practical and moral necessity in the world of responsible politics."
i would say that the AMC drew much of its strength from this sense of engagement - idealistic people willing to discourse and struggle with politics, with the endlessly problematic, messy circumstances of actually doing stuff.
2. the sixties. i love and respect my parents' generation of activists and radicals, but i feel like there's a stagnating attitude that came out of that time that's basically like: "here's what we're gonna do - we're gonna march on the pentagon!!!!" marching on the pentagon is a great and important thing to do, but it seems that somehow, at some time, demonstrations and rallies came to be understood as the ultimate distillation of political action, as the end point of a movement - like, a movement reaches its apex when they organize a big march on the pentagon. ultimately this is sort of a helpless attitude, because it still leaves the actual work of changing society in the hands of politicians, military strategists, et. al. (i realize i'm burning a straw man here - people know that there's more to activism than marching. but, i'm talking about a sort of abstract attitude that i think does exist.)
3. video installations. at one workshop, some folks from a group called street level, which does work around youth, education and technology, showed some of the fruits of a particular project, in which chicago public high school students teamed up with school of the art institute MFA students to produce their own video installations. as a confirmed art nerd, i love video installations, i love that form - it's a medium with huge potential; it's perfect for addressing issues of space and environment and documentation and information and light and sound... it's a medium with huge potential, but as with much fine art, it remains squirreled away in galleries where only art-world insiders get to have a peek: outsiders are utterly allowed to come see, but have no reason to. so, it warmed my little MFA-candidate heart to see video installations involved in radical, pop-ed praxis.
4. pop-ed. apparently, this is a big new word. i didn't know about it until now. it means "popular education" - the main man here is paulo freire, author of "pedagogy of the oppressed." the basic idea is that as a teacher, you make sure to work with your students as equals, that you learn from them as they learn from you, that your work as an educator is based on the students' needs, not on your own agenda. it's a simple idea, but it's not what we're used to, and people who try and work along these lines say that it takes lots of time and effort to train their brains to function in stronger accordance with this model. i went to a workshop on literacy programs, and the facilitator spent a lot of time at the beginning talking conversationally about some of the issues at hand in detroit. i was frustrated - i was like "when is she gonna get to literacy stuff?" after a little while, the whole room found its way to a lively conversation about problems and solutions, and i realized that the workshop itself had been an implementation of this whole pop-ed thing. it was very cool.
5. aesthetics. will swirly vector-graphics-y indie/hip-hop design become the dominant aesthetic of the left? there's something to be said for it... here's what i'm talking about:
these are from myBLOC.net, sort of a myspace for young radicals with the aim of getting youth more involved in activism. i like these kinds of visuals, but i wonder if it's not on the way out a bit, you know? we'll see.
6. activism. so, i'm not an activist, and i'm not sure why. i believe in it, i've been exposed to it, i've had time to do it and, when i do, i feel like i get a lot out of it. but, i tend to be only peripherally involved. it has something to do with laziness, to be sure, and something to do with depression and i think a lot to do with my confusions around social interaction. thinking about this has led me to think more about whether or not i really do have an autistic-spectrum disorder, but that's another post...
7. the internet. here are some other links i collected over the weekend:
radio rootz - cool youth-driven radio/media project
iraq media action project - a collection of films about the war in iraq
future 5000 - source for information on youth-led activist projects
palestine-israel education project - what it sounds like. they do great stuff with teaching public school kids about the goings-on in the middle east.
Helping Health Workers Learn - this book was recommended as a valuable source for pop-ed teaching tools, not just for health workers.
8. the end. the end. that was long, hope it was sort of interesting, maybe.
in conclusion: sometimes this is how i feel after a busy weekend - i'm sure we can all relate:
double-dipping back into art school has introduced me to the wonderful smooth-on corporation and their wonderful line of industrial molding and casting products. using some smooth-on stuff, i made a polyurethane sheep. a polyurethane sheep! no, really, check it out:
from top to bottom: the original sheep, made of plasticine coated with black enamel paint; the rubber mold; the cast polyurethane sheep.
as you see, some of the enamel got stuck to the mold, which messed up the cast a little bit, but still, a polyurethane sheep. the thing that's really cool about this is that i can now make as many polyurethane sheep as i want and, like real sheep, they'll all look alike (i could also make the same sheep out of rubber, plastic, etc.).
also, i have a deep love of formless, blobby things, and polyurethane is a particularly fun, oozy, blobby material. here's some of the excess poly that i chopped off the cast:
now for what i really wanted to write about...
this weekend i attended the allied media conference in detroit: an activist-y conference about using media/technology as a tool for social change.
1. politics. this is from an essay by ahmad sadri ca. 1994 about salman rushdie's "the satanic verses":
"The core of intellectual engagement is the acceptance of moral "responsibility" for both anticipated and unanticipated consequences of one's expressions. Only in the presence of a tradition of political engagement will it become self-evident that to be "responsible" and nondogmatic about one's sense of aesthetic calling and political mission does not necessarily amount to compromising one's integrity... Political action is often monotonous and quite unheroic. It is far from a knightly quest, an uncompromising crusade in shining armor against darkness and evil. It involves choosing goals and soberly assessing the possibilities for their achievement. Political action requires balancing the positive and negative consequences of any action and possibly retreating from a perilous path. Compromise may be a dirty word in the universe of artistic and intellectual endeavor, but it is a practical and moral necessity in the world of responsible politics."
i would say that the AMC drew much of its strength from this sense of engagement - idealistic people willing to discourse and struggle with politics, with the endlessly problematic, messy circumstances of actually doing stuff.
2. the sixties. i love and respect my parents' generation of activists and radicals, but i feel like there's a stagnating attitude that came out of that time that's basically like: "here's what we're gonna do - we're gonna march on the pentagon!!!!" marching on the pentagon is a great and important thing to do, but it seems that somehow, at some time, demonstrations and rallies came to be understood as the ultimate distillation of political action, as the end point of a movement - like, a movement reaches its apex when they organize a big march on the pentagon. ultimately this is sort of a helpless attitude, because it still leaves the actual work of changing society in the hands of politicians, military strategists, et. al. (i realize i'm burning a straw man here - people know that there's more to activism than marching. but, i'm talking about a sort of abstract attitude that i think does exist.)
3. video installations. at one workshop, some folks from a group called street level, which does work around youth, education and technology, showed some of the fruits of a particular project, in which chicago public high school students teamed up with school of the art institute MFA students to produce their own video installations. as a confirmed art nerd, i love video installations, i love that form - it's a medium with huge potential; it's perfect for addressing issues of space and environment and documentation and information and light and sound... it's a medium with huge potential, but as with much fine art, it remains squirreled away in galleries where only art-world insiders get to have a peek: outsiders are utterly allowed to come see, but have no reason to. so, it warmed my little MFA-candidate heart to see video installations involved in radical, pop-ed praxis.
4. pop-ed. apparently, this is a big new word. i didn't know about it until now. it means "popular education" - the main man here is paulo freire, author of "pedagogy of the oppressed." the basic idea is that as a teacher, you make sure to work with your students as equals, that you learn from them as they learn from you, that your work as an educator is based on the students' needs, not on your own agenda. it's a simple idea, but it's not what we're used to, and people who try and work along these lines say that it takes lots of time and effort to train their brains to function in stronger accordance with this model. i went to a workshop on literacy programs, and the facilitator spent a lot of time at the beginning talking conversationally about some of the issues at hand in detroit. i was frustrated - i was like "when is she gonna get to literacy stuff?" after a little while, the whole room found its way to a lively conversation about problems and solutions, and i realized that the workshop itself had been an implementation of this whole pop-ed thing. it was very cool.
5. aesthetics. will swirly vector-graphics-y indie/hip-hop design become the dominant aesthetic of the left? there's something to be said for it... here's what i'm talking about:
these are from myBLOC.net, sort of a myspace for young radicals with the aim of getting youth more involved in activism. i like these kinds of visuals, but i wonder if it's not on the way out a bit, you know? we'll see.
6. activism. so, i'm not an activist, and i'm not sure why. i believe in it, i've been exposed to it, i've had time to do it and, when i do, i feel like i get a lot out of it. but, i tend to be only peripherally involved. it has something to do with laziness, to be sure, and something to do with depression and i think a lot to do with my confusions around social interaction. thinking about this has led me to think more about whether or not i really do have an autistic-spectrum disorder, but that's another post...
7. the internet. here are some other links i collected over the weekend:
radio rootz - cool youth-driven radio/media project
iraq media action project - a collection of films about the war in iraq
future 5000 - source for information on youth-led activist projects
palestine-israel education project - what it sounds like. they do great stuff with teaching public school kids about the goings-on in the middle east.
Helping Health Workers Learn - this book was recommended as a valuable source for pop-ed teaching tools, not just for health workers.
8. the end. the end. that was long, hope it was sort of interesting, maybe.
in conclusion: sometimes this is how i feel after a busy weekend - i'm sure we can all relate:
